Saturday, January 23, 2010

These next two battles aren't going to be covered in remotely the same depth as that last GK one, but I figured I should toss them up for completion at the very least. Briefest of background: I rampaged PA last week and got in rematches against two good friends that live down there. First one marks the 8th or 10th game between my Chaos boys and these particular Tau - we're pretty sure I was up 1 win overall, so this would be a chance to pull ahead or tie it up.

Anarchonquistadores vs Tau [2000]

I ran my list from the tournament back in November, and he ran something like this:

I figured I had lost this one as soon as five objectives were rolled up vs Tau, and I was pretty much right. How about a by-the-unit summary?

Deathscreamer & 1k Sons - Stumbled painfully slowly towards some pathfinders in a building directly across from them, and were ignored until around turn 3 when the entire unit evaporated under SMS fire, save the 'Screamer. However he was doing his best to be useless, taking a wound from jamming his weapon, having the pathfinders make 100% of their cover saves and finally reaching the objective building on turn 5, when his robots were finally put down. Either he was killed or he simply cowered 6" under the objective at the top of the building.

Plasma Termies - Dropped early and dropped 1 broadside. Were brutally wiped out by a counter-dropping crisis team next turn.

Plasma Dread - After he outflanked all 40 kroot things down the eastern flank and gutted a rhino CSM squad (which killed 10+ kroot hounds on the way down), the plasma dread reserved on and eventually pounded through a building to pounce on one of the kroot packs. Needless to say heavy flamer + being invincible in combat killed that unit and got them off an objective, but it drew the attention of a crisis remnant and a railhead, which were able to drop the dread before he could kill the other kroot unit sitting on another objective. Really, he almost pulled this one back out single-handedly!

Missile Dread - Reserved on and scampered up the hard west flank behind a very tall building, eventually exploding a warfish that he caught stationary. Then he ate broadside railguns and died.

Melta CSM - Boosted their rhino at both railheads, but managed to only knock the gun off one of them before a crisis team arrived. They lost 8 members to AP1/2 fire, though the fist and a meltagunner survived for vengeance! Ish. The meltagun missed @ 1" range, and the fist flopped entirely as well. Both marines were clubbed to death by the tau suits. Guh.

Flamer CSM - Tried messing with some pathfinders in the NE, but were jumped by 40 kroot. As noted they took out over a quarter of them, though twas all for not.

Shooty CSM - Sat on my SW objective, but lost an inordinate number to the 12 FW in a ruin across from them. As in, 12 shots = 12 hits = 12 wounds = 6 dead marines. After that opening volley they hid until game end, when the autocannon marine clinging to the objective (hidden behind a wall) had his point contested by crisis suits.

Demons - I have no idea what the girls did. I think they helped the flamer CSM kill all those kroot, but were eaten along with them.

Havoks - Stood atop a building and pumped missiles into a railhead for 3 turns (immobilized it only, even with a sterling 3 hits a turn). Then switched to frags and pounded kroot to hell, though their going to ground in hard cover made that a moot point.

Defiler - Nestled down behind a wall and threw shells at those 12 FW turn after turn. Only 1 of 3 templates didn't scatter off (...), but that one mashed ~4 and broke them - they rallied and returned late game, but meh. Note that the defiler took 4 turns of railgun attention from the broadsides, but they somehow kept missing, having their shots cover saved or didn't do anything the defiler cared about. Oh, the defilotron also lobbed a shell at 3 crisis suits standing in the open (OMG SO DELICIOUS!!) ... and scattered away. A horrible trick to tempt me so :(

Oblit - Missed a hammerhead, was instant-deathed in return. Le shrug.

CHAOS LOSS

Well played by the Tau dude, and the CSM were well and truly out-maneuvered this time around. Also as usual I got the feeling of too few guns killing far less often then they need to to work. Ah well.

Second game was against my host's Lost and the Damned army, built using Codex:Orks. Totally awesome army modeling-wise, with quite a bit going for it in game too.

Anarchonquistadores vs Renegades of Sanctus Fornax [2000]

(Wehr, forgive if that army name is off, but I remember something to that extent)

So there would definitely be fighting! He won The Roll and deployed very aggressively with all his armor, ready to smash forward and tear chaos faces off. Once again, let's do some unit-by-unit summarizing, as I don't quite want to recreate the game at the moment:

Deathscreamer & 1k Sons - Ork first turn, Zogwort looks at Chaos Lord Severus Gaal, a bit of green lightning tzaps between their eyes ... and Gaal is SQUIGGED! There's a pic of this somewhere, but regardless it was both hilarious and so so so unfortunate. The deathscreamer squig would meet his fate next time the 1k Sons received fire, as Neugog the sorcerer, now acting army commander, pushed the ex-lord into the incoming bullets. The 1k Sons would be pounced by a trukk squad and ripped limb from limb, save for Neugog who stuck around for another turn before succumbing to the choppa maelstrom.

Melta CSM, Flamer CSM & Plasma Termies - I knew that I needed to apply a LOT of force to have a chance at dropping that meganob squad (which is scoring, do note), so the rhino CSM led the charge. Both units stayed in their rhinos after boosting up on either side of the warboss's battlewagon, with the melta boys only able to immobilize it. Both rhinos detonated after being assaulted by various trukk mobs and/or meganobz, and so the CSM fell out and threw themselves in against the nob-star. A lot of average dice later and the CSM lost (both held), after killing a couple nobz and suffering heavy loses. Counter-charges by trukk mobs saw the CSM (and nearly 1/2 my troops) mashed into paste, but only the warboss (1 wound) + 1.5 meganobz had made it out alive. A tactical drop by plasma termies saw off the 1.5 nobz, and when the warboss charged in they crumped him too - for the loss of their own lives, 6 S10 klaw attaks hurt!

Shooty CSM - They had deployed a bit farther back behind some debris with the intent of providing fire support into board-center, but Snikrot's early arrival made things difficult for them. The CSM managed to drop ~4 kommados before they struck, with burnas flopping meaning they drew combat. Next round CSM began to disappear ...

Defiler - ... but the defiler mobilized and jumped on the kommandos, smashing the unit (which couldn't hurt it) even as the last of the shooty CSM were gutted. The demon engine continued to excel at fighting things that can't hurt it, as it was able to twin-heavy flamer the stormboyz (who, forced to deep strike with Zag, failed to make it into combat the turn before) and crump them up nicely. I actually complained about how the defilotron never hits, after which he switched from rolling 0-1 hit as usual to rolling 3-4! So after breaking and catching the kommandos, breaking and catching the stormboyz, the defiler went on to ransack the middle of the board, killing off the trukk boy remnant claiming the central objective. Not too shabby!

Havoks - Bounced krak off battlewagons until Zogwort's shootas turned their guns their way, ripping their meatshields off. For those trying to piece the game together, around this point I had lost ALL of my power armored troops and ALL of my icons ... except for the one on the havoks. With the demons due to hit table ASAP, all available enemy fire went into the havoks, but they held on and summoned the girls down into Zog's squad. After that they switched to frag and slammed missiles into various mobs with varying degrees of success.

Demons - So ladies show Turn 4, and kill Zog's unit handily. From here they waded through a lot of ruin to the eastern objective, being depleted to 2-3 girls at game end. They spent their last turn going to ground out of LoS, handily claiming 1 objective for chaos.

Oblit - Did nothing to Zog's battlewagon despite being ~12" away for 2 turns, then was killed by a trukk boy fist.

DREADS - Ah yes, can't forget the twins. They showed up later than I wanted, and missile dude was less than impressive - walked on and helped the defiler burn up stormies, then helped the defiler a little more by fire frenzy frag missiles into him ... He fragged some mobs too, but was a bit too far east to do much. However plasma dread was on it, powering into the parking lot of busted vehicles in the board center, exploding the boss battewagon sitting on the central objective and holding those few trukk boyz (so the defiler could get to the squishy insides) and then continuing his rampage into the final turn, where he nabbed the killkannon bw too.

In the end, the Renegades held 1 objective with a few trukk boyz, and the Anarcho lads had another with a couple demons. Nothing else was alive except for a couple dreads and defiler playing amongst the vehicle carcasses.

DRAW

Great game with so much carnage. The early squiggening was disheartening, but the demons and dreads once again pulled things out for me!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Technically I've played a lot more than two games this year, but this is the second not involving my Warriors of Tzeentch square-basers, and the first for my thrice-cursed CSM. Up against a fully painted Grey Knights force, for which I took an entirely painted (minus 1 rhino) army of my own ...

Defiler was an odd choice, but I've been using him more of late, and figured if the PA GK ever stepped out of their rides I could punish them for it. I definitely forgot about the aegis armor thing though :P

Game: 4 objectives, 'cleanse' deployment

Chaos won The Roll, took it and didn't have it stolen from them.

Defiler View of the Battlefield

Deployment: GK terminators + grandmaster hung out behind the NW objective ruins, and both power armored GK squads started in land raiders on either side of that ruin.Shooty CSM took the SE ruin and its objective, with oblit nearby, defiler providing extreme ranged support, 1k Sons + deathscreamer ready to head NW and the fighty CSM rhino likewise ready to go N and W. Dread, termies, demons all in reserve.

GK respond by shuffling their tanks and having the termies stomp into that ruin. Land raider fire manages to immobilize the incoming spiky rhino.

Turn Two

X Marks the Objective

Dread scampers onto the scene mid-table, and plasma suicide team goes for the GK termies over yonder. The 1k Sons stumble forward, the driver of the rhino furiously beats on it but couldn't re-mobilize, the dread is out of spotting distance on the termies (aegisssss), and the termiciders, despite a stunning 5 wounds, only drop 1 terminator after he passes 4 inv saves. Vom-it. Defiler and both lascannons do nothing to the east raider again.

Token movement by GK raiders again. Two termiciders are gunned down by their counterpart's stormbolters (let that sink in: 6 S7 AP2 = 1 dead GK, 8 S4 AP5 + 3 S6 AP4 = 2 dead spikies), and the chainfister is sliced in half by the grandmaster. The termies consolidate back into cover, just in case chaos pulls more shenanigans. The raiders bounce their laz off the immobilized rhino or 1k Sons or something.

Turn Three

The demons decide it's a good time to take the east objective, so summon down and head for it - no rush, there's no way they're losing that thing. 1k Sons stump forward and throw rounds into the termies for no luck (deathscreamer = 4), rhino crew batters away, defiler + lascannon do nothing to the east raider. The dread chooses to fire frenzy rather than shooting the enemy termies, and slams two plasma rounds into the 1k Sons, scattering badly and keeping the automaton closest to him in one piece despite his best attempts. Rage begins to build in the chaos general at this point.

Ordo Malleus deign to move at all, to spite the angry dark marines. Small arms fire knocks down 3 1k Son robots, a raider immobilizes the dread, and the other one splatters the oblit.

Turn Four

The fighty CSM finally get out of their busted rhino and run for the SW objective, which unfortunately will bring them in fire frenzy range of the dread ... The 1k Sons have achieved range on the termies, so hang out for now, spraying AP3 bullets just because (deathscreamer = 2). The girls easily nab the eastern objective, CSM lascannon and defiler boomer do nothing to that east raider as usual, and the dread's template scatters off the termies.

And then the Grey Knights make their move! East raider dumps its squad into the NW objective, and west raider slams it south and disgorges its delicious power armored insides into the SW ruin. The deathscreamer takes a wound from somebody's bolter, a robot falls (leaving just 1 + sorcerer + lord), and members of the fighty CSM squad begin to evaporate under elite stormbolter fire and the attention of various raiders.

Turn Five

The forces of chaos are well aware at this point that the game is officially a draw, and has been for some time, but they decide to shoulder on. Then the dread fire frenzies on cue, looking at the poor CSM wanting nothing more than to pass by and finally punch some Imperials ... So the fighty boys back off and climb into the shooty marines' bunker, and let the dread fire frenzy into the GK squad, dropping 3 marines! Result! The remnants of the 1k Sons climb into the rhino, which remobilizes at long last! Sadly the deathscreamer had previously decided to go rambo and shoot down some of the power armored goody goods sitting on the NW objective - you know perfectly well what he rolled for shots, but the jam is saved by his inv. Ridiculous. The CSM lascannon did nothing as usual, and the defiler sneakily shot for the corner of the east raider so as to splash aegis-shielded marines with his template, but the scatter was immense to say the least.

Happily sitting on 2 objectives at this point, the GK are content to mostly just mess with the chaos guys until time is called. The termies scamper forward under cover of the east raider, the west raider gets LoS on the dread and detonates him, and a bunch of fire reduces the fighty CSM to the AC + 2 friends. And the deathscreamer dies in a blaze of stormbolter fire, with a nauseating feeling of deja vu at yet another death to small arms.

Turn Six

The game continues, ish. The rhino bearing the 1k Sons slams it 12" for the NW objective, but are so very very far away. And the lascannon tries for one more shot into the raider, but continues to suck. 6 turns of nothing, wow. The defiler mobilizes to bring some spotting range on the NW ruins, but his template either is out or scatters badly. With GK being fearless he would have had to kill ALL of them, which wasn't going to happen.

A bit of a non-starter really, though he did play it as intelligently as possible, being cagey and staying at range until a late game objective grab. I don't believe he could have gotten a win with just 2 troops, without being very very aggressive, which would have brought him into the Chaos Zone of Dismemberment. True, a frustrating game for me, but my army struggles against even 1 raider - and this list had 2 lascannons, twice as many as usual for me. For once the havoks would have been better than the defiler, but I'm running the defiler for all comers more so meh.

Two more games to go from last weekend: 2k rematch vs Tau, 2k throwdown vs Orks Counts As Madness!

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Got that game in against magic-heavy brets yesterday, and I think it was a learning experience for both of us, but deployment and the vermin lord tipped things heavily in my favor. I used the 10 pd list from the last post, and he used something that looked a lot like this:

Skaven 1HPA scooted forward ~9", clanrat blocks shuffled a bit, ratters moved up a bit for range, slaves tooled up for irritation next turn, globies moved up the flanks on intercept courses and the vermin lord slammed 16" forward around the woods to bring the heat. First round of magic saw the stake bowmen lightninged down 3 and paniced back, and the VL wither the peg knights and get off his first blast of corruption. The cloud tagged the pegs, skirmishers, treb and mounted yeomen (missed the M@A with level 4 on a 1), but wounds were minimal - 1 yeoman, 2 bowmen and solid wards on the pegs. The WLC lasered out a shot at the tightly packed KotR units, but strong deviation meant just 2 knights were tagged off the back of the unit - yay for no partials! Jezzails did nothing to those KotR.

Bret 1The bretons began with much lamenting of the peasants blocking in all the knights behind them ... The line bowmen rallied and the prophetess jumped in with them, and other movement was cautious shuffling about to primarily keep the VL from flank charging anybody. The pegs flew down by the right woods, with LoS on the WLC. Bret magic was squashed, except for a crow's feast which was let go on the VL, trusting to the dice to see him through. 11 hits later he took just 1 wound. Shooting flopped, with the treb scattering 10" into nothing and the skirmishing bowmen unable to wound the VL.

Skaven 2The VL charged the skirmishing bowmen, with the intent of carrying into the treb in line with them - the peasants fled, ran 4" and were caught, and the VL slammed into the treb instead. The HPA scooted 9-10" towards the action in the middle of the table, with globies trailed along with it. The right globies moved up into the woods near the pegs to toss stuff at them, but I didn't trust that the pegs would take the globadier bait, so the WLC was scooted up behind the impassable ruin to block LoS to the pegs. And the slaves moved up to be irritating, baiting charges from both M@A and a couple knight units.

Magic saw a lot of nothing, but drew a scroll. Shooting saw the ratters grind down a good number of M@A from the left unit, the jezzails failed to hurt the errants headed their way, and the right globes gas 3 wounds off the pegs. As expected the VL creamed the treb crew, but left one alive to autobreak, and the VL failed his restrain roll and chased it off the table edge.

Bret 2The slave baits were taken, with the left slaves fleeing a KotR + M@A charge (they fled 3+1", escaping the M@A but being trampled down by the knights, while also drawing them into counter-charge position by some character-less clanrats), and the right slaves taking the charge from a somewhat-depleted M@A unit. The remaining knights played it more or less cagey, out of fear of the HPA and VL, though the left errants readied for a charge on the jezzails next turn. The pegs forgot to move entirely ...

Magic this turn was a lesson in the importance of going for fewer but better casts than sheer quantity of attempts - brets threw 5 2-dice casts on 7 or 8+ spells, but only got healing touch off on the damsel who had poisoned herself with the chalice last turn (I let it threw in case he was going to put serious dice into wolf's hunt on the KotR who ran down the slaves). The flaming archers failed to hurt the HPA. In combat, the M@A fluffed against the slaves, but despite using their halberds, the peasants managed to save both slave pokes on 6's. Shockingly the slaves won by 1 (outnumber, nat') but the M@A held.

Skaven 3The HPA gribbled after the M@A that had chased the slaves, but they failed terror and fled away, exposing the A-bomb's flank to the BSB and her S6 errants ... The characterless clanrats charged the overrun KotR, and their ratter had to as well to get out of the way (where's my doomflayer conversion when I need it??). Meanwhile the left globes prepared to rock the errants descending on the jezzails, the right globes sat tight and readied another volley for the pegs, the BSB made sure the HPA was in his 12" bubble, and the VL zoomed back onto the scene, positioned to wither, vomit and fart all over the BSB's errants.

Only the last of those happened, with cloud of corruption claiming 2 more yeomen (panicing them south), 5 slaves (!), 0 errants (great wards continue), maybe a M@A, and all but 2 of the bowmen that the level 4 was sheltering with. Wither did draw out the silver mirror too, though the S6 hit was warded by the VL. Shooting saw the combined might of 7 globadiers, 6 jezzails and 1 ratter kill 3 of the errants headed down the left flank, which was enough to panic the young knights back. The right globes fared less well and killed 1 of themselves for 0 wounds to the pegs. Combat time and the clanrats + ratter managed 0 wounds as expected, but admirably blocked all the S3 attaks in return. The KotR lost by 2 but held. The slaves, having lost a rank and outnumber thanks to the Vermin Lord, lost to the M@A and detonated, taking a couple down, as well as a couple from the M@A fleeing in terror from the HPA. w00t?

Bret 3With a mighty 'HUZZAH!' the BSB's errants spurred into the abomination, though their heroics weren't entirely shared by the rest of the knights - the other errants failed to rally and ran off the table, the yeomen failed to rally as well and ran into an impassable ruin, and the level 4 left her 2 bowmen bodyguards to face the VL alone and ran off by herself. The full strength KotR lance jockeyed for position around the HPA/errant fight, trying to squeeze between them and the wood, and the pegs finally got it together and flitted over to look at the WLC again.

Magic saw a damsel succeed in crushing 3 jezzails with master of stone (she had tried all game now, tenacious chick that she is) and paniced them off the board, as well as the level 4 focusing a lot of aggression on the VL. I let through crow's feast hoping to get lucky again, and was rewarded with 1 wound that was warded. A failed dispel against hunter's spear made me worry, but his T5 kept him safe. After the two bowmen missed the towering daemon in front of them (?!), it was time for fighting. The errants slammed 4+ wounds onto the HPA, but all but 2 were regen'd. In return the huge gribbly rolled up 10 attaks and put them all into the BSB. He was surprised, but probability did what I thought it would: 10 attaks -> 6 hits -> 6 wounds -> 6 5+ rerollable saves -> 2 5+ wards -> 1 wound. The HPA held easily on stubborn 8. In the other fight, the clanrats continued to hold their shields up like good minions and beat the KotR by 2, but this time the knights broke (BSB no help) and were crossfired by the Abomination.

Skaven 4Only in the second half, but things were looking pretty end game for the brets. The gutters finally showed up and swarmed the prophetess, ready to spit throwing stars all over her. The VL boosted way up to glare at the fresh KotR lance, while globadiers mobilized for table quarters and clanrat blocks just rearranged in case those KotR survived or the HPA fell.

Magic flopped, which was probably for the better - the VL's corruption bomb would have hit a lot of tiny skaven units and the HPA, not to mention the bret stuff. Shooting was mostly sad - ratters failed to hurt KotR or pegs, the warpfire thrower turned on for the first time all game and detonated (!) taking out 3 clanrats from the bus (30 clanrats + BSB + engineer) though panic was passed on a shaky 9. The WLC, in its last action before being ka-pegged, dropped a 2" guess onto the M@A in front of it, but a massive scatter later nobody died. However, the gutter's earned 5x their points by taking out the prophetess with a hearty round of throwing stars - 6 shots, 3 wounds, 3 failed wards. In combat the HPA took no wounds and decided to feed, devouring the errant champ but failing to wound the BSB. It held no prob.

Bret 4Opening terror tests sealed the deal, as the KotR lance fled from the VL and was crossfired by some globadiers in the foods. With that the Brets conceded.

SKAVEN MASSACRE

A fun game, if one that I feel I was in control of from the VL's rush up the right flank on. I feel like I was let down pretty hard by my magic, or at least the VL was in position to do a LOT of damage, but 6 dice at his disposal weren't enough. The priest literally never did anything with his 2 dice, and the engineer's 2 tossed into warp lightning were easily dealt with by damsel's with MR(1) or absorbed by MR-less peasant fodder. This was my first experience with cloud of corruption though, and definitely dig it on the VL when he's going Rambo like that.

Also it should be said, playing against an opponent who is still playing the Psychology Game is somewhat startling after all the ItP armies out there. Better certainly, and it makes my pretty minimal firepower seem almost adequate, with panic a possibility. And terror certainly drove that last nail into the coffin, as it has for me in a number of games.

All the same I wish my WoT were painted. This skaven army feels too tiny and underpowered to be really competitive, but I don't want to drop the Big Boys, even if the VL sucks up so many fakking points ...